In Kurt Johnson's debut novel, Las Vegas Turnaround, readers are catapulted into the underbelly of 1980s Las Vegas. It's a world where not even the bright lights of the Strip can drive out the darkness that accompanies the whirlwind of drugs, prostitution, and violence.

The latter finally gets the better of Claire, a street-smart escort who misjudges a customer once and pays for it dearly. After she's brutally raped and beaten, she wants out.

She tries hard to build a calm, mainstream life, but it soon becomes clear that's an impossibility in this town. Her meathead brother-in-law, Wood, shows up on her doorstep with a shaky story about her sister skipping town.

Wood dumps his special-needs stepson on Claire and slinks back to the city, where he's been secretly running a casino scam. Claire is left in the dust, having to use her sharp wit and unfortunate familiarity with the Vegas underworld to piece together the truth: Wood is more brutal than she thought, and he may be responsible for her sister's disappearance.

This novel follows the characters through the worst of Vegas, to a conclusion fit only for the likes of the city of sin. "So Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen walk into a Vegas dive bar, circa 1986.

Johnson shakes the grit, the grime, the losers, the drifters and the barely surviving into a funky, seriocomic cocktail. Thoroughly entertaining" - Brian Lambert"Las Vegas Turnaround is wild crazy fun.

Around every bend in the story was another twist we didn't see coming. Highly Recommended.

" - Lori & Julia - myTalk 107Kurt Johnson is also the author of The Barrens, A Novel of Love and Death in the Canadian Wilderness, which won the 2023 Minnesota Book Award. .